Mercy's Memorial

This morning I joined my assistant Allison and her Father in attending the public memorial service for a very special pup that Dallas residents have probably heard about by now. Mercy was the victim of a horrible animal abuse incident. After being set on fire and abandoned she was found by a good Samaritan and ended up in the hands of Operation Kindness, a terrific no-kill shelter. She received treatment and her caregivers were very hopeful that she might make it, but she passed to the rainbow bridge on Sunday evening April 23.

The turn out was amazing for this special service for Mercy and as I stood and listened to the different speakers there were sobs all around me, and I even saw a few grown men wiping their eyes. As outraged as we may all be by such evil acts we must pause and take some comfort in the knowledge that there are so many more good and decent people in the world than there are bad. It was an amazing thing to be around so many wonderful animal lovers mourning the loss of one ... mourning the loss of one sweet girl that they never even met. I am very grateful to Allison's Dad who asked her to take a break from work and join him for this special service.

Please visit Operation Kindness and read about Mercy's story. Her medical bills were quickly covered by the generous donations of hundreds of caring citizens, however you can still make a memorial donation in her name to help others animals that are in need.

Raining cats & dogs!

We are up to our elbows in dog and cat portraits this month. Yesterday we shipped some poker cats to Hong Kong. This was our first package to that country.
This week we are focused on a Weim, Irish Terrier, Black Lab, Yellow Labs, and I am starting on another painterly style cat duo.

I am very excited about the new cat art below of Sambo. This was a fun project that started with a pretty decent cat photograph. We are starting to get quite a few cat orders in and I met a really nice client over the weekend that is going to have me do all of her kittens and one pup. It is really fun when I get to meet our clients in person.

Adopt Autumn

Autumn is a 2-3 year old, very petite chow mix. This special girl was named Autumn because of her pretty dark red color...the color of autumn leaves. Local Dallas folks should check out this sweet, tiny little girl's bio at City Pet Rescue.

Stolen Smiles

My clients seem to think that I have a magic keyboard with unlimited possibility. The reality is some of the things they request are a little hard to deliver, but I do love a challenge. Tracy's dad wanted her to have an open mouth smile, however he was totally unable to provide me with any photos of her smiling. I can totally relate to this, once that camera comes out even the happiest dog on the planet can freeze up. So I decided to look through my files and borrow or steal a smile from another pup. I teased my client and said that if I could pull this off I would be discussing his project in the blog. So here is what I came up with, and is it Tracy's smile? I dunno, but without a photo of her smile this is the best I can do, and I think it is not too shabby. Tracy is the Wheaten terrier on the left.


So who's smile did I steal? I took Murph the Westie's mouth (below). I rotated, shortened and warped his tongue a bit so that it would look more natural on Tracy. Using my stylus I painted in new hair around her mouth to blend better and got rid of some of the green color that did not match from Murph's image. There was no smile button on my keyboard or smile "filter" in photoshop, so I sort of had to know what I was doing. I could not have done this 8 years ago when I started my business. My crazy clients push me to learn more and expand my skills, and I really get excited when I try something new like this.

Pet Birthday Cards

Art Paw has licensed a couple of Birthday cards to Home Veterinary Care. This is a terrific Mobile Pet Clinic in Northern Kentucky. We are always happy to work with vets, groomers and doggy daycare providers when it comes to licensing images for a small fee or creating custom graphics for their business.

You can send your pet's furry pals some of our Birthday cards on-line in our E-card section. Or you can also check out our printed doggy cards, and cat cards, after all everyone loves to receive mail. Our 5 x 7 full color greeting cards also look great matted and framed in simple 8 x 10 frames.

In the News

We are officially back from vacation and what a week this has been. We expanded our working space with a new building that was constructed on Thursday and Art Paw was also featured on the 6:00 NBC news just last night. I was interviewed here in my home-office and they shot me working on Auggie & Brutus. Allison was included in the story and she was working on Chip when they shot her.
Life is good and we are focused on about a dozen different portrait projects at the moment. I'll be posting about some of these new portraits in the coming week.

Working Vacation

We are on a "working vacation" this week so please forgive me if your e-mails and phone calls are returned a little slower than usual. The plan is to stay at home and work on some of those fun painting and home repair projects that we have been putting off. I will probably keep up with some of my blogging and the new photography hobby. Pixel gets her first haircut tonight so I'm sure there will need to be a puppy post or two.
We will be returning phone calls so anyone with a "pet portrait" emergency should feel free to call us and leave a message.